Set Up Apache Virtual Hosts on CentOS 6

Virtual
Hosts are used to run more than one domain off of a single IP address. This is
especially useful to people who need to run several sites off of one virtual
private server. The sites display different information to the visitors,
depending on with which the users accessed the site.There is no limit to the
number of virtual hosts that can be added to a VPS.

Set Up

The
steps in this tutorial require the user to have root privileges. You can see
how to set that up in theInitial Server Setupin steps 3 and 4. Furthermore,
if I reference the user in a step, I’ll use the name www. You can implement
whatever username suits you.

Additionally, you need to have apache already
installed and running on your virtual server

If this is not the case, you can download it
with this command:

yum install httpd

Step One— Create a New Directory

The
first step in creating a virtual host is to a create a directory where we will
keep the new website’s information.

This location will be your Document Root in the
Apache virtual configuration file later on. By adding a -p to the line of code,
the command automatically generates all the parents for the new directory.

mkdir -p /var/www/example.com/public_html

You will need to designate an actual DNS
approved domain, or an IP address, to test that a virtual host is working. In
this tutorial we will use example.com as a placeholder for a correct domain
name.

However, should you want to use an unapproved
domain name to test the process you will find information on how to make it
work on your local computer in Step Six.

Step Two—Grant Permissions

We
need to grant ownership of the directory to the user, instead of just keeping
it on the root system.

chown -R www:www
/var/www/example.com/public_html

Additionally, it is important to make sure that
everyone will be able to read our new files.

chmod 755 /var/www

Now you are all done with permissions.

Step Three— Create the Page

We
need to create a new file called index.html within our configurations
directory.

vi /var/www/example.com/public_html/index.html

We can add some text to the file so we will have
something to look at when the IP redirects to the virtual host.

<html>

<head>

<title>www.example.com</title>

</head>

<body>

<h1>Success: You Have Set Up a
Virtual Host</h1>

</body>

</html>

Save and Exit

Step Four—Turn on Virtual Hosts

The
next step is to enter into the apache configuration file itself.

vi /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

There are a few lines to look for.

Make sure that your text matches what you see
below.

#Listen
12.34.56.78:80

Listen
80

Scroll down to the very bottom of the document
to the section called Virtual Hosts.

The most important lines to focus on are the
lines that say NameVirtualHost, Virtual Host, Document Root, and Server Name.
Let’s take these one at a time.

- Uncomment (remove the number sign)
NameVirtualHost without making any changes. The star means that any IP address
going through port 80 will be a virtual host. As your system probably only has
one IP address this is not an issue—however, if you prefer, you can replace the
star with your IP address.

- You can leave the rest of the number marks in
place until you reach the line <VirtualHost *:80> . Uncomment everything
from there through <VirtualHost>.

- Leave <VirtualHost *:80> as is—its
details must match with those in the NameVirtual Host section. If you replaced
the star with your IP address in that section, be sure to do the same here.

- Document Root is key! For this section, write
in the extension of the new directory created in Step One. If the document root
is incorrect or absent you will not be able to set up the virtual host.

- Server Name is another important piece of
information, containing the virtual host’s domain name (eg. www.example.com).
Make sure that you spell the domain out in full; we will put in any alternate
possibilities in the next line.

- ServerAlias is a new line in the config file
that is not there by default. Adding it will allow you to list a few variants
of the domain name, for example without the www in the front.

The rest of the lines in this section are not
required to set up a virtual host. However, it is still helpful to know what
they do.

- Server admin asks for the webmaster’s email.

- The Error Logs and Custom Logs keep track of
any issues with the server. The error log covers issues that arise while
maintaining the server, and the custom log tracks server requests. You can set
up a custom location for these processes.

- Make sure that <VirtualHost> is
uncommented; then save and exit.

Step Five—Restart Apache

We’ve
made a lot of the changes to the configuration. However, they will not take
effect until Apache is restarted.

First stop all apache processes:

apachectl -k stop

Then start up apache once again.

/etc/init.d/httpd start

You may see the following error:

Could
not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name, using
127.0.0.1 for ServerName

The message is just a warning, and you will be
able to access your virtual host without any further issues.

Optional Step Six—Setting Up the Local Hosts

If
you have pointed your domain name to your virtual private server’s IP address
you can skip this step—you do not need to set up local hosts. Your virtual
hosts should work. However, if want to try out your new virtual hosts without
having to connect to an actual domain name, you can set up local hosts on your
computer alone.

For this step, make sure you are on the computer
itself, not your server.

To proceed with this step you need to know your
computer’s administrative password, otherwise you will be required to use an
actual domain name to test the virtual hosts.

If you are on a Mac or Linux, access the root
user (su) on the computer and open up
your hosts file:

nano
/etc/hosts

If you are on a Windows Computer, you can find
the directions to alter the host file on the Microsoft site

You can add the local hosts details to this
file, as seen in the example below. As long as that line is there, directing
your browser toward, say, example.com will give you all the virtual host
details for the corresponding IP address.

#
Host Database

#

#
localhost is used to configure the loopback interface

#
when the system is booting. Do not
change this entry.

##

127.0.0.1 localhost

#Virtual
Hosts

12.34.56.789 www.example.com

However, it may be a good idea to delete these
made up addresses out of the local hosts folder when you are done to avoid any
future confusion.

Step Seven—RESULTS: See Your Virtual Host in
Action

Once
you have finished setting up your virtual host, you can see how it looks
online. Type your ip address into the browser (ie. http://12.34.56.789)

Good Job!

Adding More Virtual Hosts

To
create additional virtual hosts, you can just repeat the process above, being
careful to set up a new document root with the appropriate new domain name each
time. Then just copy and paste the new Virtual Host information into the Apache
Config file, as shown below